


Roaring

by princessbekker



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: (and not just as in 'oh olivia and raf are technically cheating on each other), 1920s AU, Alcoholism, Cheating, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Marriage of Convenience, Past Sexual Assault, Period Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prohibition, Smuggling, background rafael barba/nick amaro, past olivia benson/casey novak, suffragette!Alex, tags updated as story continues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-03-26 11:11:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19004581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessbekker/pseuds/princessbekker
Summary: Things were supposed to better after Olivia came home, but they aren't.





	1. Chapter 1

There are certain customs Olivia has been able to abandon by now, living off her husband’s money and the two of them content to pursue their own passions. Their marriage is one of convenience and social expectation. No one would dare harass the most powerful couple on the eastern seaboard, although most know the rumors by now. It’s hard to conceal when she walks out into the party wearing a fitted pink suit. Women don’t wear pants. But Olivia does what she wants, and no one can stop her. Nothing can truly ruin her unless she’s explicitly seen “corrupting” another woman, something which she would never be so obvious about. 

But her heels, her little white kitten heels she had made specifically for this party, give a commanding click to every step across the patio. Champagne bubbles drool up the sides of clear flutes, bubbly enough to imply soda should one of the clean cut new cops drop by and mention the recent ban no one follows anyways. If Olivia’s going to be arrested, it damn well better be for homosexuality and not something as petty as a glass to knock the edge off the nightmares left over from serving on the front lines.

People step aside for her. No one speaks first as far as she’s concerned. They wait for her to initiate, and if they’re lucky, maybe they’ll get longer than a few brief seconds of greeting and a tip on which bar won’t kick them out for hands wondering up the wrong skirts. Few powerful people come to these parties; they know this isn’t for them. Rafael and Olivia Barba do not host these parties for anyone but those deemed just as unruly. These years are a new era, albeit one which may not last.

It’s only Alex who Olivia cares to search for. Alex, leaning against one of the hedges in her short skirt and boxy jacket, hair tucked beneath a bucket hat Olivia bought because she knew how beautiful it would look on her. Moonlight bows before her, as pristine and yet hazy as the lamps keeping the party illuminated enough to see each other’s faces, but not enough to make it obvious the way Olivia’s husband’s hand is pressed between the legs of the newspaper delivery boy and his lips will undoubtedly leave dark marks. Those two belong to each other, as Alex and Olivia do.

“Lovely night,” Olivia says, holding out her champagne for Alex to sip from, to leave a mark of dark sticky lipstick all over. It smears easily. Beautifully. “Didn’t know if you’d make it. You have to be tired from all the marching, doll.”

“I’m never too tired for you.”

Alex leans forward for a kiss, one which provides a coating of her rouge on Olivia’s lips too, not that she necessarily minds. It’s a mark of being alive and unafraid, a mark of the freedom their nation claims to offer and yet neglects to most of its citizens. Even here, in the golden era after the Great War, things are not the way so many say they must be. In this yard, with others like them, they’re free to kiss and do more, so long as it stays hidden beneath the guise of plausible deniability. Maybe they’re a little drunk. Maybe they’re confused. They can say so with kissing and maybe a stray hand, but more, like Rafael does, cannot be ignored. Rafael is braver; he has the means to get out of this. But Olivia corrupting the sweet little woman she led to the suffragettes of all places even further will discredit the cause. She can’t afford to steal their right before all the states have even finished ratification.

Olivia fondly remembers her homecoming from overseas, her once white nursing uniform a rusty color and her eyes far away with things no human being should have ever seen. But Alex was waiting for her, with Rafael. The doting husband whose money kept him out of the draft and the best friend who picked up the bad habit of suffrage in the space between Olivia’s volunteering to help her country and her return in mid-winter of 1918. She wanted to put her medical training to use. She wanted to help- President Wilson was on the radio, telling women how important they were for the first time in her life, and so she went. Maybe she wishes she hadn’t. The war was bloody and endless and not a single battle felt like a victory. But she returned to a warm bed, clean clothes, and a supply of booze to keep the nightmares at bay until the temperance movement won their battle. Enforced or not, the law has made her life hell since it went into effect at the turn of the year. Six months of sneaking, and still, she has managed to put herself into a dreamless coma most nights, provided she doesn’t have Alex to warm the other half of the bed.

The air is too warm for New York, she thinks, pulling at her own suit jacket. The look is crisp, but even without the sun the world is sweltering and Alex has to be sweating beneath that coat of her own. Fashion may be the pinnacle of life and these parties nowadays, but comfort has always been one of the most important things. And so, off comes the jacket, revealing the silky undershirt tailored to hide the dip in her waist and keep sleeves off her arms. She is covered too much, Olivia thinks. If one must hide, they cannot hide it all.

“Casey’s fixing to come home next week.”

“What about her husband?” Olivia asks.

Last she heard, Casey stopped showing up to parties in early spring. Her father got around to marrying her off, and that husband of hers dragged her to the west. He’s a writer, or something, for the pictures, and was only in the big city for a little while. Research for some project. He wanted to make it “authentic.” Or maybe he came to steal away a pretty little suffragette and tame her into an obedient housewife who bears a litter of crying children who will take and take until Casey passes into an early grave from pure exhaustion. 

“He thinks she’s visiting. You’ve got a spare room, though.”

“A spare room I wouldn’t check in on, even if I heard something moving in there. And there’s a house key under the doormat.”

If she was told as a little girl she would spend most of her time breaking laws and pretending not to know or see the things she does, she wouldn’t believe it, but such is the life she leads nowadays. Every night, she drowns herself in liquid gold. Most nights she spends with the company of Alex, or another woman who may take her occasional place when Olivia is lonely and Alex is busy fighting for what they may never get. And now, now she’s helping a woman run away from her husband and start over here. Casey can get back to her pursuance of women like them, as opposed to a forced union with the likes of sleazy Hollywood writers who are scarcely human around their over-inflated egos. They can give her a life again here like she had all those months ago. Or, with Rafael’s help, they can smuggle Casey to a new beginning, where her husband will never find her. They have connections in London, but the country is in ruins. Most of Europe is. But there are places in the world left outside of the United States, particularly the big city, where people might come looking. 

“Wanna show me that room?”

Olivia catches the insinuation. She always does. But this time, it doesn’t feel right with the question of Casey hanging over their heads like rain clouds, and someone has to keep alert because Raf has completely lost himself in the music and the boy’s curls and the way their bodies stick together. The delivery boy throws his head back in what might be a laugh or a moan; Olivia can’t hear it at this distance. But he does look happy, as Rafael takes the chance to kiss his neck and probably leave damning marks that could get both of them arrested. Olivia needs to keep things under control for the two of them to have the time together they’re both often to shy to take.

“Not tonight.”

Alex pouts and throws her arms up to wrap around Olivia’s shoulders, play with the short hair at the base of her neck, barely longer than Rafael’s. She presses closer, her loose clothing doing nothing to stop the warmth that seeps through. For a moment, all Olivia can think about is the way Alex’s body feels without the layers between them. Beneath her hands, beneath her lips. The pitch to her voice when everything is so good the world narrows to their little heaven.

But she snaps out of it, because she always does, and the next thing Olivia knows, Rafael is leading the delivery boy inside, most of the guests are buried in each other, and Alex pulls away because she can see the storm brewing behind Olivia’s eyes.

“You look like you need it.”

Olivia shakes her head goes back to drinking her champagne. It isn’t strong enough for the memories that are chasing her, and the ever growing fear of the cops, and the knowledge that Casey is trying to escape the fate she was forced into by their society that couldn’t give less of a damn about its women, any of them. This feeling, this sudden plunge from ready to bury her face in the crook of Alex’s neck to wanting to crawl into bed until the world ends around her in a hail of imaginary bullets.

“I’ll be honest with you, doll. Something just doesn’t sit right around here.”

“Something, or everything? We all know this won’t last forever.” Alex glances around the party, then, and Olivia wonders if she means the safe haven or the post-war uplift, all shiny new things and criminals wearing hundred dollar suits and corruption on every street corner because the rules hardly apply anymore. There’s no point. “Shouldn’t we do what we want with the time we have?”

The time they have could end at any moment, something Olivia knows deep down. People look the other way for now, even though she’s clearly dirty with her men’s suit, but there will come a day when they don’t. Ups and downs happen now. Only five years ago, any grand party would be nearly unheard of, but now they’re on every street. Illicit affairs happen, and not just Olivia’s kind. Who can begin to say whether or not this will be just as over as the past now in five years? She could easily find herself, Alex, Rafael, and everyone they see at these parties in prison before she gets her first grey hairs, and that hurts the most of anything.

Olivia chooses not to answer her and ducks out of Alex’s arms. She’s dizzy with the paranoia, and the voices around her don’t feel as friendly as they used to. “I’m just not up for it tonight. Maybe someone else here will take care of you.”

The thought makes her want to vomit, and Alex can’t feel too differently when the two of them have kept whatever’s going on between them exclusive for what feels like an eternity, but she says it for lack of a better dismissal. At least this way, Alex won’t keep pestering her- even if it means she’s filled to the brim with justifiable anger and frustration at the way she’s been refused. It’s not the refusal itself- they’re not men, and neither would truly push beyond limits- but the way Olivia chose to act as if they have nothing between them worth protecting or keeping sacred.

Nonetheless, Alex wanders off with her coat loose around her shoulders, and Olivia watches her go with writhing snakes eating away at her stomach as if to remind her how much she hates the way her temper turns at the slightest shift of the breeze. At least alone, she doesn’t cause as much pain every time she opens her mouth. More champagne down her throat, more sway to her step, she surveys her party and nods at the lack of strangers. They’re safe here.

She does not have the police to inspect her glass, or strangers to gawk at her suit, or reporters to notice the couplings at her party. No one will blame her, let alone turn her in, for finding a seat on the porch swing and relaxing there in a curled up ball until Rafael and his delivery boy come back outside with a flush to their cheeks and their fingers interlocked.


	2. Chapter 2

After Olivia abandons her, Alex finds more liquor to bury herself in and strikes up a conversation with the other women around. Some are like Olivia, lesbians even in the eyes of society, blatant about it in the way they dress and hold themselves and make the first move. Others are like Alex- one often cannot tell what they are unless they know exactly what to look for. Social lesbians, like Olivia, can always tell. There’s a safety to it, Alex thinks, not being visible to most people. It’s one thing to hold up her sign in a march alongside her sisters, but it’s another to stand tall and admit exactly how far down her rabbit hole of feminine empowerment goes. That’s what this is, in a way. Empowerment. Maybe the women are here looking for each other, but it’s not just that. It’s the rejection of men and their power over everyone. They can have something untouched between each other. Something safe.

She finds herself leaning against one of the hedges with Melinda, one of the more real party-goers, if there is such a thing. Most of the people who come here are fake, caught up in their home grown illusions to make sure they don’t have to spend even a party like this so completely alone. Melinda, though, Melinda doesn’t turn bubbly like the champagne or flippant like Casey used to. She remains herself in all this, which is so satisfying Alex doesn’t know where to start.

“I thought you and Liv were on good terms this week,” Melinda says. “Shouldn’t you be in her room?”

“She’s all messed up over Casey coming back next week.”

“Mmm. She’s staying for the funeral before coming home?”

Alex furrows her eyebrows. “Funeral?”

“You and your Olivia, you never read the papers. Her husband died the other day. Fell down the stairs. It’s a big deal, he was working on this new screenplay, and now there’s this big question of if somebody staged it. I’ll tell ya, I think it wasn’t an accident. He had a nasty reputation.” 

It absolutely wasn’t an accident. That man did awful things to Casey, and Casey has always refused to take that sort of treatment lying down. It’s not just possible, but entirely plausible that she snapped and killed the man in order to escape. Really, Alex wouldn’t put murder past her at all no matter the situation. There are already rumors about the man her father tried to set her up with before she fell headfirst into Olivia’s parties. 

“Huh. Yeah, maybe.”

For a moment, they observe the guests. Or rather, Melinda does, but Alex is watching Olivia sit on the porch swing with her coat unbuttoned. She looks melancholy, lost, pained. Normally, Alex would rush to comfort her, but this time she lets Olivia stew. Find someone else. She will if she truly wants to- almost every single girl here would kill for a chance to be with Olivia Benson. Literally, in Casey’s case, which is a nasty thought but one that comes unbidden to her mind anyhow.

Rafael and his boyfriend come out after an unusually short time period- when they go into the house for the night, they often don’t reemerge until the next morning, while the wait staff cleans up ashy remains of the party before, and awaken those who fell asleep on the lawn. They’re talking, the two of them are, about something serious if the boyfriend’s face is any indication.

Alex’s curiosity gets the better of her and she takes a few subtle steps in their direction, pretending to dance in order to avoid suspicion. She can’t quite get close enough to hear them, but it allows a better understanding of exactly what’s going on, including the way Rafael grabs his boyfriend’s hair too tightly to be comfortable. 

She feels the need to step in, at first. She knows what men are like, even with each other, but before the urge turns to action, Rafael lets go and his boyfriend kisses him slow and gentle. They speak even softer. Whatever happened, it resolved itself just as quickly, but Alex is still on edge. She wouldn’t put it past either of them to be up to something, and if they are, Olivia will likely be caught in the middle.

That’s enough for her to shoulder her way between them and grab the boyfriend’s biceps. “Can I talk to you?”

He barks out a laugh. “Do you know whose party you’re at, sweetheart?”

“It’s not like that,” she spits. Her cheeks are warm at the mistake. Never in her life would she try and pick up a man. “But it is important, okay?”

At least he allows her to lead him away from Rafael, and get to the hedge where Alex spoke to a now busy Melinda only a few short minutes ago. It’s more peaceful over here. Countless memories of kissing Olvia in this exact spot flood her memory, clamoring for a repeat performance. She would die a thousand times over to be able to do this every single time they meet. No fear, no flashbacks, no pain. Just kiss.

“Gonna talk?”

She almost doesn’t, just out of spite, but she’s far too curious to hold her silence for very long: “I wanna know what’s going on with Rafael. What the two of you were talking about when you came back, it couldn’t have been good.”

“What’s it to you?”

“If it could hurt Olivia, I need to know.”

His eyes light up and he crosses his arms in front of his chest. “You must be Alexandra, then. I’m Nick.”

“I don’t care who you are,” she snaps. “Just tell me what you’re up to.”

Nick laughs at her again, his eyes stealing over to Rafael as he does so. “Don’t worry about it, okay? I’m doing the Barbas a favor- and Raf makes it worth my while- but you really don’t want to get in the middle of this.”

He pats her cheek like one might an overly curious child and leaves, going back to Rafael to be kissed again and keep talking about whatever they’re up to that Olivia doesn’t know.


	3. Chapter 3

Olivia’s covers have already been turned down at the corners when she returns to her room in the early reaches of the morning. She hates to stay up so late, but things need her supervision and there’s a part of her that needed to ensure Alex didn’t actually find someone else to ease her way through the night. She wants to slip between them, but there are rules she must abide by if she wants to remember where and when she is upon waking. 

She doesn’t bother to fold her clothes or hang them up, nor does she put them with the laundry for the maid to do later. Instead, everything winds up in a pile on the soft carpet before she buries herself beneath silky blankets and sheets and grabs for the wine she keeps in the little dresser at her bedside. It’s expensive, even by her standards, but she deserves the extra pampering on a night like this she had intended to use to lose herself, but instead found her brain buried once again beneath a sheet of rubble she hasn’t quite learned how to dispel yet beyond just waiting and drinking.

Maybe she’d be happier if she wasn’t so alone. She has Alex, but at the same time she doesn’t and never can. They’re both waiting for the world to crash down around them for good. Cheers to the ending that can’t be far off now, she thinks, lifting the heavy bottle to her lips. She doesn’t like the taste of wine, is the thing, but it’s more tolerable than most others and she can only stand so many bubblies before she feels like the air accumulating is going to kill her. 

When she shuts her eyes, everything turns back to the trenches and the blood and the way the soldiers treated her. She hated it so much, but she couldn’t leave. One cannot simply unenlist. And who would listen to her, anyways? None of them wanted to be there, and she wasn’t even a soldier, but a medic. Worse still, a woman. She thought she knew the limits  of cruelty before, but when women are scarce and men are stressed, they seek any way they can to relieve themselves. She was there. She couldn’t stop them.

Olivia takes another gulp of wine and pulls her pillow over her head as if she can suffocate the memories. All she wants to do is go to sleep. At this rate, there’s no point rationing out the wine, and she just drinks as fast as she can until the last drops of it smear over her lips in a mockery of the rouge she refuses to wear. 

She means to set it on the nightstand, but misses and it rolls across the carpet until hitting the wall. Then it stops with a dull thud. Olivia stares at the dark bottle, squints at it, studies it, as if it’s going to come back and be magically full again of more liquid medicine. Rafael wouldn’t like this, and neither would Alex, but they don’t know shit about the things she’s looking to escape. Rafael dodged, and Alex didn’t volunteer the way Olivia felt she had to. Neither of them can begin to understand how much Olivia needs it or why.

Of course, now is the time someone knocks on her door. Rafael, most likely, or the boy he’s been fooling around with sent by Raf to check on her. “Go away.” Someone knocks again, more insistently. “I told you to go away!” 

Instead of knocking again, her door swings open to reveal Casey, hidden in men’s clothes. It’s not the same way Olivia does it, proudly and in order to communicate how much she resents her given station, but rather a disguise. The clothes are dirty, and Casey’s hair is tucked up messily into a ratty cap that must’ve come out of a dumpster. It’s one way to disguise herself, Olivia supposes, because someone looking for her would expect the stylish choices she was known for in New York, and not something as drab and boxy as this.

“Alex said you weren’t coming until next week.”

“Plans changed.”

Casey comes in further and shuts the door behind her with her work boots. They’re too big and slide around her feet a bit as she comes all the way to sit on Olivia’s bed. At the very least, she makes no mention of the bottle of wine on the floor filling the air with its perfume, or the fact that Olivia’s clearly bare beneath the blankets. Instead, she peels off her own coat and holds out her forearms for examination.

Little blue and black bruises litter the skin, not too fresh but not too old either. The hat comes off next, letting down greasy hair and revealing dried blood matted against the side of her head. Without the shade of its brim, what Olivia had assumed to be shadow from the cap turns out to be a black eye.

“Jesus.”

Casey narrows her eyes. “Don’t say that.”

“What do you want me to say? He beat the hell outta you, Case. This is the kinda thing he could actually get arrested for!”

“He won’t be. But don’t worry, yeah? Did you read the papers this morning?”

“Casey-”

“Did you?” she repeats. “The papers, Liv, did you read them?”

She shakes her head. She doesn’t read the newspaper. Anything she needs to know, Rafael or Alex will tell her, and she has better things to do than stain her fingers with muddy ink and smear the headline proclaiming how dangerous suffrage will be if it’s fully established. ‘

“I shoved him, is all. I didn’t mean to do it that hard. I took as much of his cash as I could get my hands on, bought a ticket, and came right here. I just thought maybe I could stay here? Just for a little bit, I promise, until I figure out what to do next. Or at least get these marks to go away. So please, can I stay just for now?”

As if Olivia would ever kick her out, even if her husband hadn’t beat her, or Casey hadn’t killed him. She nods, ready to offer pajamas and directions to one of the many spare rooms, but in a heartbeat, Casey is stripping out of her clothes and leaving them on the carpet, just like Olivia had less than an hour ago, before she tried to drink her mind away. 

“Hey, hey, woah-”

“Please?”

Olivia should say no. But she’s tired, and she feels a little too alone (although it’s her own fault for refusing Alex), and she’s barely even spoken to Casey since before the war. They had been something, before Olivia and Alex began to cling to each other in the new society burning brightly around them. 

The covers shift as Casey slips between them, and if Olivia was more sober, she’d be careful. But she isn’t. She lets Casey press up against her, wraps an arm around her in return. Her skin was smoother, before. Less scarred. Olivia’s is the same. However, even if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t complain because they’re meant to protect, care for, and uplift instead of providing the same pain so much society thrusts upon them constantly.

“I’m sorry I was gone when you came home.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Casey’s hands move under the covers, nervously pressing back and forth against each other. “What does Alex mean to you? I know you take care of her, but…”

It’s a million dollar question Olivia isn’t sure how to answer, even if she wanted to. There’s something, and they do belong to each other, but whether she should admit it and, if so, how, is the most pressing issue. She pushes Alex away almost as much as she doesn’t. One moment she’s doting and the next she’s acting like the bratty but also tender suffragette is as useful as the candles on the dresser she never lights.

“She means something.”

Casey hums and settles into the covers further, paying no mind to the way Olivia reaches to turn off the lights for a good night’s rest. Before she goes all the way under, she skims her sleepy lips across Olivia’s shoulder. She sleeps well, deep, and long. Olivia, even full of wine, cannot seem to keep her eyes shut very long before all the memories come flooding back.


	4. Chapter 4

Alex stays at the party all night, keeping an eye on Nick and Rafael, even long after everyone else has started to go home and Olivia goes back into her house. The sun dances at the edge of the horizon, the same way exhaustion turns the edges of Alex’s vision hazy black. She should go home now, and try to rest before her meeting tonight. There are a lot of things she should do, such as calm down and get married to a man. But Alex has never been one for societal expectations. 

She slides up onto the porch and pushes open the door instead, because she knows no one locks it. No one stops her either, because she’s too much of a common occurrence in the Barba household. Her feet know the way up to Olivia’s room, just as they know how to be quiet when needed. Heels often click on tile, but the sound disrupts Barba’s boyfriend’s- Nick, he had called himself- sleep. 

Olivia’s bedroom door, however, is locked. The only time she locks it is when Alex is in there with her for hours on end. Hurt, shock, and something dark and slippery curl around Alex’s lungs. She should leave, she thinks, but instead she slaps her flat palm against the wood without caring if it wakes Nick, or Olivia, or whoever’s stolen Alex’s place next to her in bed. No one opens it right away, so she hits it again, several times, until the lock clicks and the door swings open.

It isn’t Olivia standing there in last night’s clothes, but Casey, wrapped in the duvet while Liv blinks awake on the mattress.

“Alex!” Casey exclaims, a genuine smile on her face contrasting with her bruises and scrapes. “I’m so glad to see you! I got in so late last night, I just came straight to Liv. I woulda called, I swear, but I thought you’d be sleeping.”

“Sorry for your loss.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Casey steps aside easily for Alex to go into the room and observe Olivia’s slow attempts to come to consciousness. There are no marks on her body, which is a good enough indicator that nothing too much happened. Casey likes to leave evidence of her tongue and lips and hands. She’s possessive like that, had been on late nights in the past when she had one hand curled around Olivia’s neck and the other buried in Alex’s hair.

Alex finds herself crawling into bed and burying her face against the flat slant of Olivia’s chest, between her collarbones and above the swell of her breasts. The way Liv’s arm falls across her waist and the way she holds her close is habitual and familiar, something they don’t do as often anymore because they either don’t have the time, or Olivia isn’t in the mood for anything but sulking. She wants to leave marks of her own. 

“I thought you wanted to be alone,” she murmurs.

“I did. She just showed up, and I couldn’t turn her away.”

“Couldn’t, or wouldn’t?”

Olivia kisses the top of Alex’s head in a gesture meant to reassure her, to settle her down somewhat before she works herself up into a real fit over this. It is bullshit, in her defense, that someone who’s supposed to be hers went for Casey instead. It hurts deep and dull.

“Case, go get some clothes, yeah? I gotta talk to my girl.”

“If Rafi and his boyfriend are around…”

“My closet’s two feet to the right of my bedroom door.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

Casey leaves at Olivia’s obvious dismissal, but she’ll be back in less than five minutes. She’s nosy, and doesn’t like to be left out of the loop. Whatever it costs her, she’ll eventually figure out what happens in this room, in this brief respite from the turmoil outside. She should be talking now, while she has the chance and the privacy, but instead Alex just lays there and lets herself be held because it’s what she deserves.

She feels safe like this, but she can’t stop wondering about what Nick is up to, and what it could mean for Olivia. Rafael has the status to get out of it, Nick can disappear, but Olivia is just high profile enough but not powerful enough to take the fall, especially given her social proclivities that have her bedroom populated by Alex and Casey. 

“Now that she’s back, what happens? Before everything, you two were close.”

Olivia studies the ceiling and bites her lip. “Nothing happens. I’ll take care of her, and you and I, same as always.”

Except it won’t be, because Olivia barely seems to have time or energy for Alex now, but with Casey around and the drama of her most likely having killed her husband, which puts her at a higher risk for possibly snapping and hurting Olivia next, and Alex couldn’t bear that. She doesn’t want to lose her. It was close enough back when she was in the war. This is something else entirely. 

“And what does that mean. You and I. Am I your girlfriend, am I one of the girls at your party who you touch when it’s convenient…?”

“Doll, not like that.”

But it is like that, sometimes, and Alex can’t stay here much longer because she’s got meetings to attend, points to make, and she wants to get some sleep beforehand so that she can be useful to the cause. There are people who need her, people who will treat her better than Olivia is right now, and definitely better than what Casey is apt to do if she feels threatened.

Just then, Casey returns in Olivia’s clothes, which fit her, but differently. She doesn’t look like anyone or anything, but rather a vision of something, something that makes Alex think of tangy tastes on her tongue and the feel of soft lips on hers. She bows her head so she doesn’t have to look at her. 

“Liv, what now?” Casey asks.

Alex takes that as her cue to slip out of bed and leave the two of them to talk, and get back to trying to figure out what Nick and Rafael are doing before it hurts Olivia too badly.


	5. Chapter 5

“So…” Casey asks, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “What are we doing today? Can we go shopping? I’d love to get a new dress, maybe a couple hats-”

Olivia stands up and puts her hands on Casey’s shoulders to still her, calm her down a little. “I’ve got work to do for Rafael, you know. I help him run his…” It occurs to her that she isn’t entirely sure what he does nowadays; only that he provides her with numbers, and she puts them in the books so they know how much they have and don’t fall into the pit so many around them are of spending too much too fast. Everyone can tell something dark is on the horizon, but they’re the only ones who seem genuinely interested in avoiding the imminent destruction.

“Boo.”

Her bottom lip pouts out, something that had gotten her everything she could have wanted once upon a time, but hasn’t been strong enough to pull at Olivia in a long time. War and maturity will do that to someone, she thinks. Either she’s grown too much, or Casey hasn’t grown enough. It’s likely the latter, if the way Alex has become a different woman lately is any testament. Olivia really and truly doesn’t mean to hurt her, but it can’t be helped sometimes. Intimacy burns nowadays.

“I’ll keep you company. Promise I won’t get in the way, or anything. And I’m sure if you get bored…”

Although the rest of the sentence goes unfinished, Olivia can fill in the rest of it easily. She shakes her head. Again, she doesn’t want to hurt Alex, which she did without even doing anything her old self used to so often.

“I think you better rest, considering your last few days,” Olivia says instead, and pulls her duvet around herself while she goes to her closet in order to pull something to wear. A nice suit when she’ll just be doing the books doesn’t make much sense, but she doesn’t want to present herself any other way, especially not when she knows Casey is liable to pop in at any time. And, if she’s lucky, Alex might drop by. She owes her too many apologies.

As she smooths the lapels of her coat, she wonders if she should go visit Alex today, should she have the time. She knows that Casey’s presence hurt, and Alex- Alex doesn’t deserve that. It isn’t fair to her any more than it’s fair to Casey. The world likes to chew women like them up and spit them out; it’s quick to destroy any spirit which it does not approve of. This time, though, it was not necessarily the world that was cruel, but Olivia. She could have allowed Alex inside.

When she comes back to her room, Casey has opened her jewelry box and started playing with what she’s found inside, or perhaps preparing to pocket and pawn them in hopes of getting a subsistence Olivia would be happy to give her if she’d just ask. She may have changed, but not this much. She’d hate herself if she changed that much. 

“Didn’t I give this to you?”

Olivia glances over at the necklace dangling from manicured fingertips, a silver chain with a heart shaped pendant on it. It might’ve been a locket, but it’s been so long since she’s looked at it that she can’t be confident in her memory.

“I think so, yeah.”

“When was the last time you wore it?”

She doesn’t even try to answer the question, merely shakes her head and runs a brush loosely through her hair. She has work to do, and if she doesn’t do it, there’s no telling what repercussions could await herself and Rafael. On a whim, she reaches out for the necklace and clasps it around her neck. The cold metal is familiar, will soon warm to match her skin, but at the same time it feels entirely wrong to wear this. She stopped when she went to the front lines. She came back to Alex. It makes sense that she’d never pick it back up again. 

But now here she is with the pendant resting against her throat and her eyes laden with sleepless dark bags as she prepares to go do the finances. Once again, she doesn’t entirely know what she’s doing, but she gets this feeling, deep in her stomach, that it’s something bad. She wouldn’t put it past Rafael’s boyfriend to be a part of something sketchy. To have pulled Raf into it as well. The fact that she doesn’t know exactly where the money comes from is, in of itself, a bad sign.

“Don’t cause trouble,” she says. Her own voice sounds hollow. “Maybe I’ll get you dinner tonight.”

Casey says something in response, but Olivia isn’t listening as she makes her way to her office. One of the maids has already poured her a glass of wine, and Rafael or his boyfriend have placed a stack of new documents, transactions, for her to go through and put into the official records before deciding how it impacts their finances. Tedious, but necessary work.

When she sits down, the only thing she can think about is how hurt Alex had looked when she saw Casey the morning after being brushed off. It’s like there’s not a box with a little diamond ring in the shape of a promise sitting in her desk drawer. Not a proposal- they can’t- but something to bind them together a little. That same box will likely never be opened, hasn’t been since Olivia bought it in the first place. It feels right, but at the same time, like a leap she isn’t prepared for.

The next thing she knows, the telephone is in her hand and she’s asking the operator to be connected to the Suffrage Center of Lower Manhattan, the place where Alex spends a great deal of her time. It takes too long, but before she knows it, Alex voices scratches through the speaker, spouting out the building name and introducing herself as ‘Alexandra’ in a prim, proper, fake voice.

“Alex?”

For a moment, there’s silence. Olivia thinks she’ll just hang up on her. But then, a soft sigh floats by and Alex’s chair creaks with her shifting weight. “Liv.”

“I just wanted to say- I wanted to say I’m sorry.” Her tongue feels too big for her mouth. “About blowing you off last night. I’ll make it up to you, I promise. You can expect a package later today with-”

“Buying me things doesn’t make it okay.”

Olivia’s mouth snaps shut. Alex is right, but nowadays, it’s the only way she can resolve emotional injuries. Physical are much worse. While she waits for more stinging words or the disconnect, she empties her wine glass and allows the flavor to roll around her mouth. It’ll take longer for her to buzz, but that’s okay. She can afford more.

“I’m worried about you.”

Of all the things she expected to hear, that’s not any of it. For a moment, it’s so surprising that she nearly drops the telephone. “What?”

“Casey probably murdered her husband, and Raf is up to something and- I really think you should be careful, is all.”

For some reason, Olivia hangs up. She can’t even explain to herself why she does it, just that she does. Her whole body is a little cold. She grabs for the transaction sheets and rings the bell on her desk for someone to bring her more wine so she doesn’t have to think about this anymore right now.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr is also @beelivia


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